Tigranes

I did $75 for Wasteland 2, mainly attracted by the beta; minimum for Dead State, minimum for Double Fine more for the insider info than the game; and currently, $140 for Eternity. I don't expect to be funding a lot of Kickstarters, really, Dead State and Double Fine were borderline for me.

At least everyone was butt-ugly, to make up for the cleanness.

I don't mind whatever as long as I can skip it, or tell the little helper on the corner of my screen to shut up and never, ever come back.

Let's keep it mellow. It's OK to debate each other's arguments re. what constitutes racism, misogyny, etc., but don't slap each other silly over it.

Actually, such things may not be very easy to mod. it certainly would have been difficult in IE games if they were not built in. It shouldn't be too difficult for the devs to put it in, so I support it, if possible. It's one thing that extends longevity, even if you'd normally play with the proper NPCs.

Yes, I hope it is dealt with in an interesting fashion. Funnily enough, a medieval-fantasy video game with nonlinearity and C&C is one of the best mediums in popular culture that can show the social complexities in such a system. It also is a good way to force difficult choice on players if it's not ham-fisted into "hey we should totally kill all the rich people so the slaves become rightful owners of their labour and we have a happy socialist paradise and I get 5000XP".

Having a busy weekend and it's tough keeping up with everything, I hope to update soon. If you see anything you think should be on there don't hesitate to post here or PM me, it helps a lot.

It was an exaggerated example, yes. As far as I know (which is not much in this case), though, 2D sprites actually need animations to be uniquely produced - whereas 3D sprites, for instance, can simulate moveable 'joint' points in the models.

Unfortunately, it is often quite annoying to implement - you'd need to create new animations (AFAIK, not simply mirror them), especially in instances where animations match up with each other (say, if you had a left-hander in a game like The Witcher, pretty much all the combinations of sword-fighting animations would need double the work). Not to mention it would be hardly noticeable.

Edit: I should give the thread (and you guys) a chance before I swing the hammer around. Play nice.

I wouldn't mind, as long as the process of earning your class is interesting. It's no fun if you spend the first 5 levels as a useless nobody, or even worse, if that becomes a lengthy tutorial-thing where you simulate the learning to become a mage by going through idiotic training things.

The quotation is accurate. See: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60362-publishers-accused-of-trying-to-exploit-kickstarter-obsidian/

And that's exactly what the previous wikis supervised by Ausir have turned into: a comprehensive, useful manual of knowledge. E.g. the Fallout wiki. I'd prefer to applaud those who contribute to the community than fart in their general direction, but that's just me.

AAA budget RPGs like FFXII cost between 30 and 50 million; games like GTA 4 cost 100 million. Gears of War, at $10 million, was considered very cheap. Double Fine's own Psychonauts, a cartoony-looking adventure game from 2005, cost 12 million. Keep things in perspective.

A know-it-all character who always likes to mock you for how incompetent and ignorant you are as leader of the troupe. If you miss out on information or get stuck he can help you out but will milk it for all it's worth; if you do things right and find hidden information or snippets, especially about himself, you can humiliate him, blackmail him, etc. A nice variation on the traditional mentor/helper/tutorial-man NPC.

Not quite, but I won't be surprised to see similarities.

Yes, if I think that romance is stupid and detracts from the plot, setting or characterisation as a whole. Which is the case in 99% of video game romances I have seen. I want the characters in a story I enjoy to not act like they are in a bad porn film, and I don't think that's unreasonable. You don't say to people, "hey if you don't like that part of the book, don't criticise it, just skip those pages, and everyone is happy." So what if the romance is tucked away so you literally never know it's there unless you go looking, but in reality, that's not how it works (or people would complain there are no romances in the game). And then we also get into where finite resources should go.

New edits to: FAQ - 'Game name', 'System Specs' & 'Engine' Qs; new media coverage

You trusted them with your $ and of course you are entitled to something. So, where does it stop? Are you entitled to merely a discounted price on the game (which you have)? Are you entitled to additional communication from devs and gestures of appreciation (which you have)? Are you entitled to the beta for everyone? Are you perhaps entitled to more things, too? Should the community get to vote on everything? Where do you stop? It's a dangerous path to try and monetise that as well, to say how much do you pay to deserve what. Kickstarter rewards are rewards for appreciation, not a shop where you buy things.

Project Eternity now has a community-maintained wiki, courtesy of Ausir; over time, it should grow into a useful source of information to consult and for fans to contribute to. http://eternitywiki.com

BG1 and BG2 on GOG is a much better bet than the Enhanced Edition as things stand. They are perfectly playable and enjoyable 'vanilla', and mods can really enhance the game. In contrast, the Enhanced Edition's changes are less in the spirit of the game than the best mods, and really don't do a whole lot. It's only worthwhile if you want to play on tablets. BG series, IWD series, Torment all have high resolution mods, bugfixing mods, etc; BG series has literally hundreds of mods, and if you ask here we can easily provide you with a good selection to use. Planescape: Torment is a seminal game and obviously it has its problems, but it is an incomparable experience.

Feargus confirmed the existence of deities, but not whether they are figments of imagination or whatnot. I'm pretty sure they'd exist, though.

Keep the personal insults out guys. Feargus put it very well in one of the Kickstarter interviews; the reason the games in the tradition of IE died out has very little to do with their failure to sell, or some kind of 'inherent' inferiority. A lot of it came down to a very specific corporate problem and chain of events at Interplay, licensing problems that pretty much killed two of the biggest isometric projects in the middle of the decade, etc. The pitch behind Eternity is that it's not a simple homage to a type of game that died out because it was clearly obsolete, it is making the kind of game many people have loved and have never stopped appreciating, by moving past the situational problems like publishers and licensing.

The best traps are logically designed, yes. But I really like having even generic traps as something I can lay, it really expands the tactical options as they're one of the few things that really uses the terrain.

Imagine a developer makes game A during 2012; releases it at the end of the year. By and large, the money they are paid by the publisher supports their costs during 2012. When the game comes out, those payments cease. They might get a small (and I mean small) cut of the profits or a flat sum, usually based on metacritic / sales. But generally, what they need to do is make sure they have another contract lined up, so that as soon as game A is finished, they can start making game B in 2013; and then, they'll be paid by the new publisher for that. The rest of the money from the sales goes to the publisher, the distributor, the middleman like game stores, etc. Yes, it really is like that. If you buy a $50 game, you will very rarely see the developer take $20 or $30 of it. You can find more exact breakdown of who gets how much on Gamasutra, but the basic gist of it is that counter-intuitive as it may seem, most developers really do live hand to mouth; even if your game just sold pretty well, if you don't have another contract lined up, you might need to let people go. (Recently, Obsidian had to let dozens of employees go because Fallout: New Vegas only got 84 on metacritic not 85, and they did not get their bonus from the publisher. Never mind the game sold 5 million copies.)